Messages - herman

This is something I find interesting. People in the Leafs org say the Marlies and Leafs play the same system. But I frequently hear people who watch the Marlies say they play a more up-tempo game and never dump the puck in. What's the deal there?

Why would the Oilers do this? Just don't play Montoya, no pick lost. Their season is a disaster anyway, why throw away a pick just to play Montoya?

They would have given up a 5th instead of a 4th if they just didn't play Montoya. Now, draft analytics would say that's basically a flat chance at an NHLer, but it's still a controllable oopsie.

Speaking of controllable oopsies, Montreal has activated Carey Price for tonight's tilt against the surging Panthers. They've got 10 games left and he's coming off an injury riddled season, including this latest, which was a concussion. He'll be backing up Niemi who is making the final stop of a revenge tour against the teams that gave up on him this year and last (Dallas, Pittsburgh, Florida).

“Some guys call this the 32nd NHL team because of how much resources this team has. From what I’m told that all changed four years ago when the new management came in.”

– Colin Greening on the Marlies reputation as an organization

#Dubas2018

I know they were working over a depleted and depressed Canadiens squad, but seeing Marlies-grads Johnsson-Nylander-Hyman Dermott-Carrick run roughshod over an NHL team was really something.

I envisioned a similar line for last season, as it was one with limited expectations coming into the start of the year, but I can't complain about them holding back the kids until they were clearly going to hurdle the (serviceable) veteran roadblocks. The phase out/in is happening and it's thanks to the way the Marlies have progressed.

Johnsson, Carrick, Aaltonen, Pickard, Marincin, Holl, Gauthier, and Kaskisuo are RFAs* Nylander is an RFA too, but nobody thinks we're not signing him

12-16 players on next season's roster will have been the product of our internal development program. Throw Matthews and Marner and Rielly in there as well, as they skipped a grade. That's somewhere between 50-80% of our roster being developed here.

In 2017-18, the Leafs will play an average amount of “tired games” with 26, but will only face a tired opponent 16 times, tied for the lowest amount in the league with Calgary — four less than the next closest team. The 10 game difference between playing tired and playing a tired team is the lowest number in the league and is 24 games worse than the two leaders, Colorado and Detroit, both of whom have a rested game difference of 14.

As Frank mentioned, we're not likely to see the same injury luck as last season, where the only major injuries were Rielly, Marner getting sick, and Zaitsev's non-concussion; all our other injuries appeared to be whatever was convenient for the roster at the time. Let's see how the depth holds up.

For those who aren't going to read that for whatever their preferred reason, it's a numerical model projecting how the schedule affects teams' win probabilities (expressed as points).

Over the whole season, the Leafs had one of the hardest schedules to play, based on the level of rest they would have compared to the teams they were facing (e.g. a team playing the third game in four nights against an opponent who has been off for two days, waiting for them at home usually means the visiting squad coughs up a stinker).

As I brought up a few weeks ago as teams kick into their playoff stretch drives or season death spirals, the Leafs now have one of the easier schedules remaining (after that crazy December on the road) as they have so many home games against trade-deadline-depleted bottom feeders who have pretty much given up, while Boston and Tampa have extra games in hand on us, meaning they have to play more vying for top seed.

The Leafs' pretty high number of top-player injuries does make this a bit tougher on paper, but the Marlies are providing well above replacement level talent swings.